Developing effective strategic decision-making in the areas of hotel quality management and customer satisfaction from online ratings

The current paper uses MUSA, an MCDA method, to investigate the contribution (perceived importance) of four core aspects that capture guests’ experience – i.e. location, cleanliness, service and value – to overall guest satisfaction, indicate, through importance–performance analysis, the weak and strong points of customer satisfaction, explore guests’ demanding level and prioritize the service areas where improvement actions will be more effective. To do so, 150,639 attribute and overall satisfaction ratings were retrieved for hotels in four Ionian Sea islands on TripAdvisor. The examined criteria were found to contribute differently to overall guest satisfaction across the destinations. Also, service revealed as the weak point of customer experience for hotels in Corfu and Zakynthos, whilst location and cleanliness for hotels in Cephalonia and Lefkada. The results further suggest that Ionian Sea islands’ hotel customers are non-demanding and that quality improvement investments/actions in value and service would be more effective in delighting customers.